A/P Ben Leong receives NUS Outstanding Educator Award

The Awards celebrate educators, researchers and professionals who have made significant contributions to society and distinguished themselves with in the fields of education and research, both in locally and internationally.

A/P Leong has received numerous Faculty and Annual Teaching Excellence Awards (ATEA), was placed on the ATEA Honour Roll in 2011. He was a member of Facebook Inc.’s Faculty Thought Leader Council in 2013 and is invited to teach at the Sichuan University Summer Immersion Programme each year. He created Coursemology, an open source online education platform that uses gamification to make learning fun and engaging, and is working with the Ministry of Education to train secondary school teachers to teach Computer Science. A/P Leong has consistently achieved high student ratings across various modules. He takes pains to design assignments and assessments to teach new concepts and applications, arranges additional tutoring for students who need it, encourages his students to be active and creative in analysing and solving problems and fosters the development of solutions and applications that are relevant to the real world. His outstanding accomplishments in pedagogy, such as his use of online gaming and field visits, and ability to engage and inspire students, were acknowledged with this Award.

A/P Leong said, “It is important for our students to learn how to learn. We have to keep in mind that we are preparing students for a future we cannot predict and for jobs that do not presently exist. There are two things that I believe really matter in education: mindset and values. With the right mindset, our students will likely find success in life, but without the right values, there is a danger that the success may come at the expense of society at large. ...I hope that my students will grow up to live inspired lives and become outstanding citizens. By encouraging curiosity and a love for learning, and also by inculcating habits of hard work and grit, my goal is to kindle the intrinsic motivation in my students to work towards becoming the best versions of themselves that they can be."

About the Outstanding Educator Award

The Outstanding Educator Award acknowledges faculty who have excelled in engaging and inspiring students in their knowledge discovery. The Award comprises a cash component as well as an education-related grant to enhance professional growth and development, and contribute to teaching and learning at NUS. Such activities include developing instructional materials, engaging in classroom research, attending education conferences, among others.